


Terminated?

by Waterdipity



Category: Half-Life
Genre: ASL, Autistic Character, Autistic G-man, M/M, Mute Gordon Freeman, mute character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:53:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26550199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waterdipity/pseuds/Waterdipity
Summary: G-man gets fucking fired.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 62





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Re-write in progress, here's the new version of chapter one.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

In fact, it wasn’t supposed to happen at all.

He detested the term “prisoner” but that’s what he was under the Vortiguants control. They suppressed him, more effectively than the Combine had, a mental barrier rather than a physical bind. He’d been infuriated, his unwavering patience faltering for a moment, before settling itself back: he could wait. If the Vortigaunts wanted to try and hold him back from his goals, then let them try. He would escape their gaze. All that was needed was the timely opportunity, which would present itself accordingly. The most likely outcome, he could see it, though he dreaded it: Alyx Vance, gravely injured, surrounded by Vortigaunts and the Freeman, resurrecting her from near death. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t need to. It was not only his escape route, but the only way to revive the Vance offspring from death.

But this had not been the opportunity he’d expected.

His pseudo-prison guards let him see willingly, not restraining him from their sight. Their telltale purple hue clouded the sides of his vision, tunneling it, forcing it into the corridors of an abandoned medical wing. That was… odd… to say the least. So far, they had been restricting him as much as they could muster, what was so vitally important they felt it necessary to show him of their own volition?

The hospital was dingy and dark, dust and dirt was crusted to the corners of it’s once sterile hallways. The walls had yellowed putridly, the paneled ceiling black with growing mold in some areas. Dead headcrab zombies lay about the place, slumped over and shot open. With them lay Combine. Crying, not that of more shuffling dead, but of a human girl rang from a distant doorway.

The scene beyond that doorway was something even he could admit was profoundly horrific.

More Combine soldiers lay dead, two of them looking as if having died in a hand-to-hand brawl rather than by firearms, one clearly having been shot in the head crumpled on it’s side next to the far wall. Another was beaten to the point where it was likely dead before being done getting pummeled, but what really caught his eye was that it was still holding Freeman’s crowbar. The end of which was covered in blood. And hair.

The buzzing, flickering hospital light above gave spotlight to the disturbing scene below it. Alyx, hunched over almost completely, sobbing quietly into her hands. Her cries pained him, and though he knew he wasn’t there and was but observing, he felt the insurmountable need to comfort her. Her arms trembled as she held her head, fingers digging into her scalp, taking deep breaths to attempt to calm herself, only to return to sobbing. Usually he had immense difficulty translating human emotions and reactions, but here he knew why she was so distraught.

What was left of Gordon Freeman lay below her. He was prone on his stomach, arms spread out beside him, HEV suit showing signs of severe damage around his lower back. Occasionally, the suit’s AI gruesomely glitched in it’s permanently monotone voice, “minor…..fracture….. detected…. user ...d-d-d-eath.. i-i-i-i-minent.” He didn’t want to, but eventually, his eyes drew him to the cause.

Red. That’s the word he first thought of. Red. The dark red crusted and coagulated in his brunette hair, the bright red speckling the floor under him, the almost black color of the gore and viscera on the side of his caved skull. Even tones of fleshy pink as one green eye had bulged and popped out of it’s shattered socket, as smaller pieces of brain matter revealed itself from inside his ruptured cranium. The teeth had even cracked and broken in his mouth, revealing shards of molars and exposed dentin, nerves and blood vessels. He knew what he was looking at. It was Gordon Freeman, his employee. His leading combatant to the Combine. But, this splattering of stuff covering the floor, it couldn’t be Freeman. Couldn’t be. There was no way. He would never have let this happen.

He could feel the Vortiguants grip leave him, suddenly. The purple cloud around his sight faded, leaving him ever so slightly whiplashed with the rush of freedom back. He felt the full mobility of his being, and without much forethought, immediately surrounded Alyx in his influence.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next re-write chapter.

She fought him, greatly, the strength of her will surprised him. A few seconds after the blinding white, followed by the darkness of the void, she shed her moment of weakness and tears to protest. Alyx clenched her teeth so hard she felt them creak, “What the hell?!” she shouted, lingering grief and anger flooding her tone. He remained just out of her field of vision for a few sacred moments, waiting for her rage to stifle itself. When it didn’t, and she looked ready to yell even louder, he interjected.

“Miss Vance-” The fire apparent in her dark eyes honed in his own electric blue ones, “It seems you and… Doctor Freeman have gotten yourselves, into a- rather unfortunate altercation, have you not?” Her brow furrowed, face screwed up with rage all of a sudden. “Who the fuck are you? Did you do this?! Do you work with the Combine?!” Her face tinged with red and streaked with tears, her eyes puffy, but all the while she still looked the spitting image of enraged. He folded his hands in front of him, ignoring her demands. “I can… assist… where it is possible. If you desire it.”

All around the pair, the darkness morphed, melting and transforming into that previous unfortunate scene: a Combine Overwatch soldier, raising the crowbar, ready to land the killing blow on Freeman’s prone body. Alyx froze at the sight. He readjusted himself, trying and failing to find evenness in his tone, “I can help himmm, Miss Vance. I can… stop… them, from their lethal assaults.” He watched, intrigued, as tears welled the girls eyes, turning them cloudy. A heavy feeling stirred in his chest. He ignored it. “But.” Her eyes flicked to him from the gruesome scene as it disappeared into the inky darkness. Tugging at his tie and folding his hands again, he continued. “I cannot just… take… haphazardly. If I were, to… give him back, I require- rather, my Employer’s require- reimbursement.” He itched to adjust his tie again, but held himself back.

Alyx wasn’t stupid, he knew this, but he was no less frustrated with her hesitation given how dire the issue was. Her brows knit together in focus and skepticism, she asked cautiously “...What kind of ‘reimbursement’ do you want?”

He strode past her, wringing his hands in front of him before tucking them behind him once again, still desperately itching to adjust his tie or move his hands more than he so allowed in front of clients. The blue and purple colors of his form dancing and falling around her peripherals like the beginnings of a waking dream, she felt like she was being watched like a hawk, as if he was ready to pounce on her first reaction.

“I would need something- someone, of equivalent… iiimportance.” He sucked in a breath, aware of how upsetting his verbal mannerisms must’ve sounded to one unused to hearing them. When she looked ready to ask again, he interrupted. “I… don’t require repayment, now. It is something… already along the set path, Miss Vance. I simply… would like to, inform you.” He put it as cryptically as he could muster, not wanting to reveal just who, or when his employer’s would abduct their payment. If he did, Alyx may not accept. And while he wasn’t above giving her a Hobson’s choice, he didn’t wish to unless it was absolutely essential. Because Freeman was essential, and at the moment with that same man’s corpse laid on the tile floors of a filthy hospital, he felt it necessary to veil the outcome from her.

She gave him a puzzled look, stuck as to what he meant, “Wait-” She almost glared at him, frustrated with his evasive words. “What do you mean-” she paused unsure what to even ask, and in the space of silence, his voice filled it. “You will, know. When the… occasion arises, Miss Vance, you will know.”

Blinding white invaded, she gasped like she was being drowned underneath it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one isn't as energetic as the last two, I'm basically recapping episode one here :/

_“Tell me Doctor Freeman, if you can. You have destroyed so much. What is it exactly that you have created? Can you name even one thing? ...I thought not.”_

Throbbing, radiating pain spread itself across the side of his head, a splitting headache blooming in his skull. His eyes ached, his skin felt heavy. His brain felt like it was floating in oil sludge, he guessed his reflexes were as dull as rocks right now. Slowly, he regained his awareness, the fog gradually lifting from his mind. It was dark, heaviness weighed his body down… he was buried. Patches of light peeked past the pile of boulders resting precariously above his face. Above him, a voice, “He’s got to be around here somewhere…” Alyx! She must’ve been spared from the blast impact!

Robotic, mechanical, clunky noises came from above him, and for a moment he felt fear spike in his chest, before the head of Dog poked through the light and beeped happily at him. His breath caught in his throat when the behemoth of a robot picked him up out of the rubble, metal hands clamped around his upper arms, ominous clouds drifting in a blood-red spiral above the Citadel.

“Dog, I think I found something. Stop what you’re doing and he-” He heard her voice die in her throat, before picking back up to exclaim “Oh my god, Gordon!” Dog setting him down on his feet, he felt the wind immediately get knocked out of his lungs when she hugged him excitedly. It rushed out of his chest when she nearly crushed him under her strong embrace, feeling his already aching ribs scream in protest after a second. Noticing, she quickly let him go. “I was so worried…” She breathed, before collecting herself. She laughed to herself nervously, before Dog piped up again, presenting him with the gravity gun. “Good goin’, Dog-” A crash boomed in the distance, his own eyes automatically looking to the red-orange sky above for striders or dropships, both of which thankfully were absent. “God, that Citadel is really coming apart… we should get up there.”

Using the gravity gun, he removed and shot four planks off the destroyed steel iron gate, launching them into the side of the still-standing Citadel. The gate fell before him with an unpleasant ringing noise, his metal booted feet doing a balancing act as to not allow them to slip through the iron bars. Loose concrete and rock made it difficult to walk even on level ground, his metal feet nearly swiveling off a loose rock he’d happened to step on. A static monitor caught his eye up ahead, somehow still managing to stay online even though it was completely exposed to the elements. “A-lyx, come in!” The telltale voice of Eli sounded from the screen’s speakers, choppy and clearly almost out of range of communication as it was.

“Dad?!” she rushed to the monitor, frustration soon edging into her tone. “Aly-x?! Alyx, co-ome in!” “Hang on, hang on! So much interference… Dog, come help me with this.” After instructing him where to position his clamps-for-hands in the right way to pick up the signal, Eli’s concerned face filled the computer’s screen.

“Alyx! Alyx, where are you? Please god, tell me you’re outta the city.” “Well, not quite yet-” “What?!” Eli leaned back from the screen, shocked. “But listen dad, we found him!” Alyx proclaimed, “You found Gordon? I don’t believe it.” He looked from Alyx to Gordon, and then back to Alyx. “Well, well listen, you two need to get out of the city! The citadel could blow at any moment-” Suddenly, the stark white lab coat of Kleiner disrupted the feed.

“There’s no question that it will, I’m afraid. Our remote sensors indicate the process is accelerating toward a dark energy flare.” He parroted off, Alyx giving him a concerned look. His mouth twitched downward, he didn’t mean to give Kleiner a dirty look, but he had a habit of choosing the worst times to prattle off about jargon, and it certainly wasn’t helping his already aching head.

After far too much information about what exactly could happen to the human body exposed to such phenomena, Eli graciously interrupted. “Kleiner! Stop!” Eli collapsed on screen, hand supporting himself against the wall in the background. “Oh, Eli, I’m sorry! Well… I’m certain there’s nothing to worry about, Alyx should be well out of harm’s way by now.” Kleiner said in his nasally tone, before Alyx chimed in. “Well, actually, we’re still in the Citadel-” “What? Oh dear, but there’s really no time! The core is exceedingly close to collapse! There’s no way to get far enough away- well, actually, nothing short of direct intervention in the core could possibly lessen the blow…” He saw her dark eyes shine with intelligence, her brow furrowed in thought. “You mean… IN the core?” She glanced at his HEV suit. “Yes, yes, in the core, but it’s far too dangerous! You have to consider that the chamber will be bathed in radiation-” “But Gordon has the HEV suit? If we could find some way into the Citadel, it’s possible-” “NO!” Eli yelled through the speakers, though his voice was heavy with worry.

“But, dad-” “Izzy, talk some sense into her!” ‘...Izzy?’ He thought to himself, slightly amused at the nickname. “W-well-” Kleiner stuttered, “I would Eli, but really, there isn’t any other way-” “Dad.” Everyone turned to Alyx when she made herself known to the two bickering men. “We can do this.” Some doubt seemed to unwind from her father’s face with her confidence, “OK, just… just promise me you won’t take any unnecessary risks, okay?” He could see Alyx’s expression soften, placing her hand on the screen’s warm surface. “I promise, Dad. We’ll be careful. And don’t worry, I’ll see you soon.” Eli smiled, before Dog let go of the broken antenna, and the monitor returned to static.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gman doesn't have a good time :(
> 
> (Also kings I immensely enjoy comments! If you leave me one I cry bc I love discussing gman!!!)

The second he’d cast the girl out of his dimension, his body slacked, his posture going from ram-rod straight to slouched over in social exhaustion. He didn’t… enjoy… humans. Not collectively at least, but he took no moral issue with this since humans themselves seemed to despise each other for the most asinine reasons. They were difficult, hard to reason with, harder to understand on some levels, even to a creature gifted with partial omniscience. Immediately, he cracked his knuckles, relishing the slight ache in his joints and loud pops that emitted from his left hand. Rocking back on his heels, he lightly pinched the hem of his suit’s coat, rubbing the slightly coarse, dark blue material between his thumbs, index, and middle fingers.

Now letting the atmosphere of his space surround him, a sigh leaving his parted lips before it was immediately followed by a small ‘pop’ sound. He made the small ‘pop’ sound again, and again, until he’d managed to reach twelve or so rapid fire mouth-pops before he was satisfied. Gradually, his mind began to decompress, like a blimp slowly deflating mid-flight before it’s flattened body glided to the ground below. He slowly walked in a loose circle, until his hands began to itch and beg to move, flapping them quickly. Normally, he didn’t do it quite this fast, if he was alone for more than a few spare moments he did it slowly. Usually to some sort of comforting noise, like earth’s rain and thunderstorm patterns, which he’d taken a massive liking to.

How Freeman had managed to let his guard down long enough to get into such a bloody state, he didn’t know, his nose wrinkling at the sour image of bright red brains and dark brown hair scattered on the ground. Funny as it may seem for someone who constantly dealt with ‘consequences’ he hated gore. Absolutely hated it, everything about the fleshy, visceral insides of beings made his abdomen churn, made his skin crawl. He wasn’t exposed to blood and guts often, not nearly as often as Mr. Freeman, but when he was it stuck with him and fouled up any good mood he could’ve possibly been in. It struck him… a little differently when Freeman was in such violent disarray, it was much different than when it was some poor civilian or a rebel who’d been caught in crossfire. He didn’t know what it was. But when he recalled that image of his best employee beaten to death on the floor of a dirty hospital, it made something in him hurt. Ache, almost.

But now it was resolved, it was fine. Freeman would be put back together like nothing had happened, all he had to do was tweak the timeline a little here and there, make sure that specific Combine soldier didn’t get there at that specific time. Simple as that.

And yet, he heard his Employers calling him. Like a backdoor in time, they opened it to him. He couldn’t disobey them, so he followed their beckoning through the opening in his blackened void. 

His dress shoes squelched against the wet, muddy floor. His kind thrived in wetlands, though personally, he hated it. It was much like the Earth environment known as the “Everglades” except just slightly less sopping wet but with just as much mud. Though the almost goopy substance underneath his feet wasn’t of the same chemical makeup of Earth dirt, it still held a firm comparison. He shook his left foot a bit, trying to get the pitch black, tar-like goop off his shoes.

“Are You Paying Attention?”

They didn’t sound happy with him, which wasn’t totally uncommon, but their tone- collective and booming, yet so far away and almost echo-like in his ears- made him uneasy. What were they angry with him for?

“Pay Attention. We Have To Discuss Your Relations With Ms. Vance And Mr. Freeman.”

Oh no. He shifted from one foot to the other, an empty feeling settling into his middle. Not saying anything, he watched them above him, with their wispy, dark forms.

“Your Relations With Vance And Freeman Have Proved Antithetical To Our Goals.”

Was he not… supposed to save Freeman? Was his head getting dismembered somehow a part of the plan? Of course, there’d been other times, like the time when his employee had crashed his unreliable car into a brick wall and died on impact, when he’d gotten jumped by a headcrab and suffocated to death, or the time a stray bullet from the Combine had ricocheted and hit the back of his head killing him immediately, or-

“We Have Come To The Conclusion That You Are A Liability To Our Cause.”

He felt paralyzed, rooted where he stood, hand gripping the handle of his suitcase so hard his knuckles were white. He wanted to protest, say something that might convince them otherwise, but his mouth was dry. When they came closer, their bodies a myriad of dancing colors and countless different shapes and dimensions at once, he flinched away, scared. Very few ever saw them this up close, fewer still could even remember what they’d seen. And if they ever did get quite this close, it was always to harm rather than help.

“Give. It. Here.”

Their voices, too loud, much too loud now- dropped several octaves, to the point it just sounded like rumbling, growling in his ears. They were coming at him slowly but quickly, he could hear every subtle, miniscule movement they made, felt his bright cerulean eyes now watering and welling with tears. Their appendages were reaching for his briefcase, in no rush to seize it, they knew he couldn’t avoid them. But he still didn’t want to hand it over, he knew what that meant, he wasn’t stupid, not as stupid as they thought he was. He knew exactly what giving it to them meant. “No-” He cut himself off, his voice small, cracking with dread. His body felt hot and cramped, like he was slightly too small for his own skin.

“You Are Being Removed From Your Current Position.”

They grabbed his wrist, his trembling fingers still white-knuckling the briefcase, and he wanted to scream. It was searing hot but freezing cold, the translucent tendril that viced itself around his hand, almost ghostly in it’s grip, but at the same time felt as if it was going to crush his arm under the force. They squeezed, until a sharp spike of pain shot through his hand, making him drop the briefcase. On the ground below the struggling bodies, the case shattered like obsidian glass, shards and chunks of it thrown every-which-way, floating forever in different directions all around them.

“You Are Going To Be Relocated.”

The tendril began to creep up his forearm, then his upper arm, until it reached his neck, and that’s when the panic made him start moving. He turned, ready to run, to where he had no idea. But before he could even make the first step, another tendril wrapped around his ankle, making him trip and land on his side in the sludge below. The appendages crawled up his skin surrounding themselves around his neck, not to strangle him- he didn’t need to breathe after all- they were smarter than that. 

It was to pop his head off his shoulders.

Pressure built and built, tears spilling over his pale cheeks from the pain it caused, a silent scream ready to leave his throat, before a snap and crunch made his vision go black.


	5. Chapter 5

Everything flew past his mind at lightspeed, the Citadel, Breen, Black Mesa, Alyx, Eli, Combine. Everything. Even the green, sporadic lightning of the Resonance Cascade flashed in his mind as he drifted, split apart, put back together, HEV suit sounding off all sorts of alerts, ones that didn’t even make total sense.

As all this happened, these shards of time piercing his brain, these shrivels of space and dimensional splits bombarding his body, he didn’t panic. He didn’t struggle, he had enough experience with whatever space-time shit was happening that it didn’t hold the same effect it had once had. At this point, it was honestly incredibly annoying. He could barely complete a task without getting interrupted by whatever fourth dimensional bureaucracy found it fit to interfere. When was the last time he’d done something that hadn’t had god-like beings making it worse?

He imagined the figure of him, with his dark blue suit and tie, eyes that never revealed any humanity. How they pierced into his skin like surgical scalpels. It had to be him. Wherever he was, in whatever methods the bureaucratic being had to watch him struggle, Gordon was sure it was his fault. Him? It? They? He didn’t know for sure. He did know that this sort of catastrophic interference was the G-man’s work, it had his fingerprints all over it. 

When Gordon would see him again, he had no idea. Maybe in the next couple of seconds, he thought, as he floated into and out of spatial nothingness, flew past unsteady collages of memories past and present. But when he did, he was going to kick that smug bastard’s teeth in for fucking things up a third time.

And then- everything stopped.

It felt like his body was trying to keep moving, trying to keep traversing forward, but something was stopping him, an invisible wall cutting his movements off and making them stutter. Sounds muffled and far away called to him from unreachable distances. 

Familiar noises sped up, A tram on a monorail, a door shuttering open and closed, the sounds of announcements on an intercom. Boots on metal, gunshots, the reverb of roaring and static chatter he’d gotten so used to hearing around every corner. Crying, growling, unintelligible groans of walking corpses. The breathing of other living humans. Breen’s voice monologuing. He opened his eyes, squinted them at the white lights.

“I didn’t see you get on the tram.”

Everything flew past his mind at lightspeed.


	6. Chapter 6

For all her intelligence, Alyx could swear she should know more.

Memories… faint, fuzzy, memories bounced around in her skull. An explosion, a train crash, that mysterious guy in the suit… and then these… fuck, she should know what they were, they spoke to her. If she focused hard enough, she could almost see them.

They were spotty in her memory, their voices nothing but garbled distortion in her consciousness. Their solid forms, she couldn’t even begin to materialize or rationalize, but the colors swam in her brain, translucent and beautiful. Holographic, almost, that’s the only word she could’ve squarely compared them to. Like jellyfish that floated delicately in the sea, or manta rays that glided along the sea bed, that’s the only way she could describe their languid movements. Slow, but purposeful, wispy but powerful.

Her body felt frozen, not cold frozen, but couldn’t move any of her limbs type of frozen. It wasn’t cold at all, actually. In fact, warmth seemed to surround her body, like she was put in an oven on low heat. It wasn’t totally comforting, she didn’t know where she was and it was grey and static-like in every corner of her very limited vision, but it did help. Her muscles felt numb, her mind tugging at her to sleep. She desperately wanted to.

Their presence felt… unwelcome. Distinctly unfriendly, it overwhelmed every facet of her body and mind. Their callings out to her, almost like chanting, wasn’t like that of the Vortigaunts throaty singing. It wasn’t rhythmic, it wasn’t harmonious. It sounded like screaming. 

Something spoke to her. Those things at the far and unreachable corners of her vision, they were speaking, but not a language she knew. A dialect she’d never heard in her life, maybe one no human had ever been graced with. Their words, or sounds that functioned as them, escaped her. Despite this severe communicative disconnect, she could hear them relaying a message in her mind, in her own consciousness’s voice, multiplied and not totally clear, like a low vibrating: “Go Back.”

The heat that had engulfed her body dropped, to the point if she could’ve seen her own breath, it would’ve been foggy. The hair on the back of her neck stood straight, goosebumps prickled along her arms, her mouth went dry. It felt like she’d swallowed cotton balls.

Voices prattled around her, voices she knew, voices of home. Of her father, Eli. Barney. Kleiner. 

But one. One stood out that she didn’t want to hear. One which had spoken those words that had made her father nearly pass out from the terror they’d inflicted. She could see those pinprick eyes in the darkness of her unconscious, eerie and yet- she found it oddly comforting. Every voice in her head silenced themselves when it made itself known.

“Prepare for unforeseen consequences.”


End file.
